


of dust and blood and smoke

by greekdemigod



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 15:38:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6334654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekdemigod/pseuds/greekdemigod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His thoughts were dust, floating, swirling—evaporating whenever he tried to reach out for them. It was infuriating to know he needed to remember, but also know he couldn’t. If he stayed perfectly still, eyes and ears closed, there were flashes of somethings—someones, rather, that felt important even if he had no clue why they were.</p><p>People rushed around him, hands groped for his to drag him along. The world was a thundering, rampaging thing around him, a beast roaring and untameable. Fire crackled behind him, smoke billowed through the subway shaft. He had inhaled a lot of it and it itched inside his chest.</p><p>Something had happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of dust and blood and smoke

**Author's Note:**

> After the terrorist attack in Brussels, close to where I live, I needed to do something to deal with the fear and sadness.  
> This happened.
> 
> [Unbeta'd.]

His thoughts were dust, floating, swirling—evaporating whenever he tried to reach out for them. It was infuriating to know he needed to remember, but also know he _couldn’t_. If he stayed perfectly still, eyes and ears closed, there were flashes of somethings— _someones_ , rather, that felt important even if he had no clue why they were.

People rushed around him, hands groped for his to drag him along. The world was a thundering, rampaging thing around him, a beast roaring and untameable. Fire crackled behind him, smoke billowed through the subway shaft. He had inhaled a lot of it and it itched inside his chest.

Something had happened.

Once he started running, carried on the waves of frantic energy surrounding him, it was easy to _keep_ running. His body seemed used to this—to running, weaving through a crowd, pushing stress and the overwhelming awareness of danger to the back, so far back that it almost ceased to exist. He was a train barrelling ahead, without brakes.

He didn’t stop running until he doubled over on the pavement, coughing and trembling, three blocks from where an explosion had ripped through his morning. His eyes were watering, his breath came in short, sharp puffs and the world vibrated unpleasantly, too vibrantly around him. His fingers twitched on his knees as he stood bent over the grass, emptying his stomach of what he thinks had to have been an exquisite breakfast.

There was a moment he felt perfectly content to stay there, but then something else kicked in. A need to save people. To go back, even if every fibre of his being screamed, his blood pulsed at his wrists, a headache thumped against his temples because he _couldn’t go back_. It was irrational to _need_ to go back when all he needed was to stay here and stay safe.

People were still coming up out of the foaming mouth of the underworld, light from the flames flickering menacingly when he got back. Tears streaked down his soot-covered cheeks, from the pain at the back of his neck and the uncomfortable squeezing of his lungs, from the burning of his throat and the fear trying to lay claim on him and paralyze him.

He fought against natural instinct, one he could tell he had been taught to ignore in favour of another set of rules, and took his first step back down into the railway station.

There was a lot of crying and screaming, coughing and sobbing. He squinted his eyes against the darkness, trying to look for survivors that couldn’t get out on their own. There was a woman trapped beneath the burning remain of a subway car, a bunch of metal that scorched his palms and his right arm as he tried to lift it off her leg. There were two children cowering in the dark, so terrified they couldn’t even open their mouths to scream. He took them each by a hand and helped them out, back into the sunlight.

There was an old man, unconscious, that he was carrying up when the world started spinning again.

Three blocks down from where they were, tended to by worried passers-by, another series of explosions rattled the grounds. Dark plumes of smoke spiralled up to the sky and a tower shook, only to start collapsing right after.

Not that surprisingly, the people around him began murmuring about _nine eleven_.

Behind him, the opening of the railway station finally crumbled, sealing off the tunnel from the outside world. He wanted to tear all those rocks away, clear a path for when the firefighters or the military finally came around to help, but instead he fell over.

It knocked a burst of air and smoke from him. He launched into a coughing fit, one that had him rolling onto his side so he could spit into the grass. The exertion only seemed to have made his breathing more difficult. It felt like he was suffocating a little, despite the gulps of air he tried to suck in.

“ _Oh, Alexander!_ ”

There were people crowding around him, ones he thought he could almost remember, like the dust in his head would form their faces if he thought long and hard about it. One especially seemed to catch in the light. But the people swam in his eyes, mismatched eyes and long tangles of red hair and a feather tattoo.

The girl crying at his side clutched his hand between hers, kept pressing her red lips to his knuckles, and on his other side someone dripped glitter all over him.

A deep darkness took him.

When he came to, he remembered that he was Alec Lightwood, that Isabelle, Clary, Jace, Meliorn and Magnus had come for him, that bombs had gone off in the New York subway. Grimacing, he knew the country would be in chaos and terror over that. He also knew that he had done all that he could, but it didn’t brace him for the guilt that was already settling in.

 _One could always do more_.

“Don’t move,” said the voice of Magnus, announcing the man before he popped into his vision. “My magic’s healed a substantial amount of your injuries, but I wanted to focus on your mind before I set about… well, setting your bones. Some of it might still hurt.”

Alec smiled a small, grateful smile and swept his gaze through the room. Isabelle and Clary had fallen asleep in chairs by his bed, Jace where he sat against the wall. There was no sign of anyone awake except for Magnus.

It would not have surprised him if that was the warlock’s doing.

“Thanks for coming for me,” he muttered, propping himself up despite the ache in his arms.

Magnus smiled a more brilliant, enchanting smile. “I think I speak for all of us when I say we’d always come for you.”

Alec couldn’t stay awake long, he found, but as he was blinking drowsily back to sleep, he prayed his memories of them would never turn to dust again.


End file.
